bald grief in yawning sockets. plump apathy both slack and taut. sallow, puckering silence flakes in the combustion of each breath. we are close, but each of us is enclosed in glass. stranded together at the bottom of a deep ocean.

looking for color where it's all gone. listening for words where there is only sound.

thinking that the walls are paper. that we can draw on them. be glimpsed, if not seen. helpless clouds wandering a vast atomosphere. but really, they are cinder blocks. the obese architecture of time. weighing us down. smothering. as we rejoirce in the delusion that the choices are ours.

together comes on crutches. and leaves us limping. it was never very far. until it was behind us. the end of the world in her back pocket. like chewing gum and bad poetry.

so much distance measured in small choices.

the bright colors and the terrible songs. the furious swallow of temptation. chokes us all.